To Blend or Not to Blend?
Blending customer contacts, such as outbound outreach for inbound agents (or vice versa), and more recently, digital streams with voice calls, appear to have several benefits for contact centers.
With blending, productivity could be improved...
What to Write When Saying “No”
While it’s never easy or much fun to tell a customer “no,” you can write it the wrong way—causing write-backs, harming satisfaction, destroying rapport—or the better way.
The better way doesn’t mean saying “yes”...
Welcome to the Metaverse
There has been much buzz lately about the metaverse to the point where “meta-” is becoming a tag, even a company name a.k.a. Facebook.
But what exactly is the metaverse? And is there a...
Setting Up Your Reps for Success
The retail industry has always been marked by its unpredictable sales peaks and valleys—and that can make managing retail customer service a significant challenge.
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent repercussions (like supply chain disruptions...
How the New Normal Impacts Retail
Since the dawn of direct-to-consumer retail, customer service has separated leading retailers from laggards.
As retail matured and transitioned from brick-and-mortar to online, the contact center’s role in the customer lifecycle gained increasing importance.
In...
Meet our February Wall of Fame Sponsor: Cognigy
Company
Cognigy
CEO/Founder(s)
Philipp Heltewig, CEO and co-founder
Sascha Poggemann, COO and co-founder
Founded
2016
Describe your company
Cognigy, a leader in Conversational AI, powers up enterprise contact centers to exceed customer expectations, improve agent satisfaction, and rapidly respond...
Why Customers Must Be Allowed to Speak to Your Company
One of the best, most insightful articles on customer service I’ve read in some time - one that pinpoints the inherent conflict or dialectic between investing in excellent customer service and keeping costs low...
Walking the Walk: TD Bank’s New Financial Wellbeing Program
One of the key missions of banks is to help their customers understand their finances, and the choices and the products and services available, in order to help them make the best decisions. These...
Back to School…
Time flies! Here we are at Back to School time … prepping back packs, planning schedules, assigning duties, and gathering tools needed for success. Back to School is a good time to reflect...
Top 5 Posts in October
Throughout October, our readers explored a variety of the most pressing topics facing our centers. Our authors discussed whether our agents should continue to WFH, how to best lead our agents with compassion, and...
Keeping the Customer Promise
Promises are the most personal and binding of commitments, and therefore are to be made carefully, kept fully, and broken only in the most extenuating cases and with thorough explanations.
So, when a company, its...
How to Prepare for Peak (and Return) Season
Retailers are preparing for peak season by analyzing consumer behavior trends, tuning up their tech, adjusting staffing levels, and shoring up logistics.
But it’s also a good time to prepare for the tidal wave...
Top 5 Posts in September
Welcome to the top 5 blog posts in September! As the start of October will ring in Customer Service Week, it is only fitting that our top post this month is another annual favorite...
Top 5 Posts in August
We kick off our top 5 blog posts this month with a top 5 favorite, "20 Empathy Statements to Show Stressed-Out Customers That You Care." Leslie published this article back in 2020, and it...
Enabling Excellent Omnichannel Experiences
Customer service, but particularly support, has grown in importance significantly in today’s online world. Getting such help has also become a lot more convenient and easily accessible: which plays a prominent role in creating...
Top 5 Posts in July
This month, our readers have been interested in insights and recommendations on how best to lead and coach our hybrid teams. They have also been reading up on strategies to use AI to support...
Top 5 Posts in June
Our top 5 blog posts in June carry a similar theme from May with a continued focus on our people; our customers, agents, and leaders. Our authors coach us on creating a culture of...
Top 5 Posts in April
Our top blog posts in April share a common theme with those from March. Our readers continue to focus on how to move forward in the new normal. Specifically this month, our authors talk...
Top 5 Posts in March
Hybrid, remote, or fully in-person? This month, our top blog posts are all about how to move forward in the new normal. Our authors offer insights on hiring and training remotely, the best ways...
The Future of Contact Centers?
Despite their increasingly important role in attracting and retaining customers and revenues, contact centers continue to face high agent turnover.
Yet to keep delivering excellent customer service and support and making sales, centers must...